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You're most welcome Bill!!
I'll be following you with this pretty soon too as I also will be building a new system with Win 7 Pro.
I have had no issues with my W7-Pro machine at all ... however, I am not doing any music in it as yet.
I will be putting together another machine and this one is to become the VST/Software machine that runs the Midi Keyboard, and the biggest reason why I delayed was that M-Audio's support and forums, have not been forward and clear with their drivers, and I was not sure that the Sound Card (1010LT) can function when it's all "software" ... so I left it alone a bit longer on the XP-Pro SP3 machine.
All in all, these versions have less need to check things and spam the internet connection on your network, or home machine, and this is one small part that eats up resources that you don't see! Apple, btw, is the worst at this, btw! Every time you play a song or do something musically related, iTunes immediately alerts its servers.
All in all, my recomendation is to always use the "Pro" versions ... why? ... they are not commercially bound, like the home use versions why, and they have a lot less installed crap for you to remove. In fact, in both XP-Pro and W7-Pro, I never had to remove anything ... except Norton in the first machine. I stick with F-Secure after having done support with them, and for them, and they are the best at handling issues and helping!
I will be doing W8, on one of my machines, that does not have anything in it, other than World of Warcraft, when I'm bored with the Coffee House!